Good Guy with a Gun?

by muon

Yesterday another fatal shooting occurred not far from where I live. I don't know if the victim was a good guy or bad guy by the NRA's Wayne LaPierre's standards. I just know he was a 24 year-old man and left behind a family. The shooting took place in an alley surrounded by rowhouses that had children in them. At least 10 shell casings were found at the scene. We're talking Wild West here, with only house windows between the gunplay and innocent kids.

I'm certain George Zimmerman thought he was a good guy with a gun. He wasn't. He was a murderer. So was Michael Jock, who evoked the Stand Your Ground law after shooting an unarmed man in an argument about pizza.

The policemen I know (and I know quite a few) would all rather NOT have "good guys with guns" on the street. The only thing that separates a good gunslinger from a bad gunslinger is a quick judgment call before pulling the trigger. In that half second, they appoint themselves judge, jury and executioner.

With that thinking, in our society, they're ALL bad guys.

Quit Talking

by muon


After the last week, I'm sick of the word "meaningful." Everyone's saying we need to have a meaningful conversation about gun violence. That we need meaningful change. Meaningful action. The NRA says they'll make meaningful contributions.

So far, all most people in authority have done is to bandy the word "meaningful" around, as if that makes everything all better.

I was going to write this blog after my anger over the latest mass shooting died down a bit, but I realized today that I don't want to lose this anger. I don't want anyone in America to lose their outrage and frustration. I want us to outshout all the "meaningful" rhetoric and make sure that, this time, something gets done.

No one in this country needs to own a military grade rifle. No one needs ammunition clips that hold more than five bullets. Hunters wouldn't use these weapons any more than fisherman would use torpedoes. Anyone saying they need to own these types of weapons or that much ammo is mentally ill on some level.

All guns should be registered and their owners licensed for each class of weapon owned, just as we all have to do with our motor vehicles. The license should require a competency test, same as a driver's license does. Weapon insurance needs to be mandatory, as car insurance is. If a gun owner wants to sell a weapon, he and the new owner need to get their butts in to see a notary, to transfer the title legally. It ought to go without saying that background checks need to be done before licensing and registration. That means no gun shows and no internet sales of either weapons or ammo.

Sales of more than one gun a month and of suspiciously large amounts of ammo need to be tracked, just as we do drugs like Sudafed.  People who enable others to commit gun violence by providing firearms need to be held accountable, no matter whether we're talking about someone who buys guns to sell to felons, or parents of potentially violent mentally ill children, like Mrs. Lanza, who stupidly brought military grade weapons into her house.

We need to do more than prevent mass shootings. As horrific as they are, many more people become victims of gun violence every day. In the past two months in my hometown, we've had shootings or reports of gunfire nearly once a week. Another report just last night.

I'm sick of hearing all the excuses why we can't do anything to reduce incidences of gun violence. I'm sick of the whole American attitude that we can't do anything to stop the gun lobby. If you're going to spout insensitive nonsense about gun rights and Stand Your Ground and how none of this would happen if everyone carried guns, then you're part of the problem, and I for one will shout you down.

This week, Senator Feinstein was the only one I heard stand up and say, in effect, "This is what I'm going to do," when she promised to reintroduce her assault weapons ban. That's what's needed. Not platitudes about meaningful this or meaningful that. Not people who sit around waiting for everyone else to do something. We need people willing to get things started.

Call or email your elected officials and tell them to quit talking and start acting. Find your representatives here.

Brains! (Liberal vs. Conservative)

by muon

I read an article a few months ago, the gist of which is just now hatching into share-able graphics on social media. The article told of 13 different scientific studies that show how people calling themselves liberals and people calling themselves conservatives have pathological difference in the brain. (You can read about the studies on the ABC News website.)

Liberals tend to have larger anterior cingulate cortexes, associated with tolerance to uncertainty. Conservatives have larger right amygdalas, the area that governs sensitivity to fear. Conservatives avoid self-harm. Liberals are usually more concerned with harm to their group. Liberals focus on progress and are more likely to take risks to find better ways of doing things. Conservatives will stick to the status quo if it's comfortable for them and poses no immediate danger.

What none of the studies showed was how these two different kinds of brains evolved (yes, I mean evolution. If your sensitivity to fear makes you tremble at that word, better stop reading now). My theory is that families who never had to find creative solutions for their problems probably developed conservative brains.

Say your family has had wealth for generation after generation. Your ancestors could always rely on money to feed, shelter and clothe. They could pay someone to fight enemies. They could buy immediate solutions to problems as they came along. Your family never had to figure a different way of doing anything, and they, of course, never wanted their way of dealing with life to change. But they became very fearful of having their wealth taken from them, because it was their only means of survival.

My family were always great jury-riggers. When you can't afford to buy the means of survival, you have to creatively adapt or die. Duct tape was invented for families like mine. And while our stop-gap measure was buying us more time, we could be planning how to fix the problem for the long-term, in the most cost-efficient way. We have less fear of uncertainty, because we've dealt with it on some level each day, for generations.

Now, I'm not saying that all rich people are conservative. I think that families who have taught creative thinking to their progeny, and passed the teaching down through the generations, are the ones who have developed liberal brains. But I believe ultra-conservatives, either now or at sometime in their families' past, have probably been the "haves" of society, in some way. If not by money, then by strength or charisma or whatever. They never needed to learn adaptation, and so became fearful of it, and fearful of losing their special "have" at any moment.

Then again, if you don't believe in evolution, I guess God simply created conservatives and liberals physically different. So get over it, and quit trying to inflict your fear-mongering right amygdala on society. Or some liberal is apt to get out his duct tape.

Tax Political Advertising

by muon

If we learned anything from this election, it's that obscene amounts of money that could have been better spent elsewhere went to put ads on TV, radio and the Internet, to put mounds of junk ads into our mailboxes, place billboards and signs all over our towns and highways, and of course, shower us with lovely, unceasing robocalls. Shedon Adelson alone spent $57.7 million on super-PACs.

Everyone says we ought to curb campaign spending, but it's not going to happen, not as long as the politicians on the receiving end of the funds, or who benefit from super-PAC support, are the ones who need to figure out how to reform the way they campaign.

So, while they're spinning their wheels, let's try a stop-gap measure. Impose a federal tax on all political advertising that supports federal candidates, pans their opponents, or where money changes hands so that a political view can be expressed to, say, more than 500 people at once. This would include advertising by lobbying groups trying to influence legislation.  State taxes could be imposed on advertising for state office candidates or lobbyists trying to influence state legislation, like all the pro-fracking ads on TV. I'd even be make an exception for bumper stickers and campaign buttons, so regular citizens could express their views without being taxed. (But not lawn signs, which are as ugly as billboards. You want a lawn sign, fine, but you ought to at least pay something to your town for ruining the scenery.)

I think I'd mind the ads and billboards and robocalls a smidge less if I knew a percentage of the megabucks spent would be used to, say, fund election reforms, or help pay off the deficit.

They Call it 'Flexibility'

by Ruth A. Sheets

Just when you think you have experienced every manifestation of Romnesia, one more bit of craziness raises its head.  On Elliott Spitzer’s show on Current TV “Viewpoint,”  Romney’s frequent change of position and casual lying was referred to as “flexibility.”  Then, viewers were informed that this is just the quality needed for negotiating.

Since George Orwell’s classic “1984,” we have been aware of the power of language.  Give something a clever name and it won’t matter what that thing actually is.   Advertisers have taken advantage of this for years.  We call flavored sugar water things like Coke, Pepsi, Dr. Pepper.  None of it is good for us in any way even the one named “Dr.”  The names are great, though. 

We expect politicians to manipulate language to catch the attention of particular constituencies.  That is just part of political life.  The current cycle has carried this idea to heights previously unimagined by most Americans.  

Mitt Romney’s handlers are masters at language manipulation.  They craft his message so carefully that the lies are often tucked in the fast flow of words that Romney pours out for his audiences.  The lies are carefully mixed in with truths and half-truths and when called on them, he will “double down,” strongly defending the lies. 

Mitt Romney lies so often he can’t possibly remember what is the truth.  But, he is a good Mormon, so we can’t call what he is saying lies.  We say he is flexible.  Candidate Romney is sooooo flexible he has no obvious set of core principles.  It doesn’t matter, though because the majority of folks who support him like his one main feature: White.  This means that whatever he actually believes doesn’t matter to them.  And, the lies are irrelevant too.. 

For the people on the fence, calling lies “flexibility” makes their choice of Romney acceptable.  Remember, these are good Christians who love the 10 Commandments.  If their candidate is a liar, they will have a personal conflict.  Renaming Romney’s lies clears up the problem for them.  Isn’t language manipulation great?!

One-Issue Decision? Not This Year

by muon

I made a list last night of all the issues, off the top of my head, that seem to hinge on this election. I'm sure I forgot something. Here's my list, in no particular order:

Unemployment
Education
Energy independence
Climate change
Renewable energy
Equal pay for women
Middle East, terrorism, war, national security
Healthcare
Women's healthcare, including contraceptives, abortion, and Planned Parenthood
Medicare and Social Security
Immigration
FEMA and crisis management
Infrastructure
Welfare, food stamps, other poverty issues
Science, Arts, PBS
Deficit
Gun control
Citizens United
Supreme Court appointees
Banking/mortgage industry problems
Foreign and Domestic Trade
Wealth imbalance

For all of you still undecided folks out there (if any), really, all you have to do is go down this list and decide who you trust to make policy for you on these issues, at the Presidential, Congressional, State and Local levels. For instance, if you're hit by a natural disaster in the next 4 years, do you want someone who acted the way President Obama, Governor Christie and Mayor Bloomberg acted this week, or say, the way President Bush acted during Hurricane Katrina? Do you want a president who'd shut down FEMA and tell the states to handle disasters themselves, even when their infrastructure is completely compromised?  You might say, oh, but I don't live in a natural disaster prone area. I thought so, too, until Hurricane Sandy.

These issues are the main reasons I'm voting, not only for Obama, but for all the Democrats on my ballot.  I say main reasons because there are others.

I refuse to vote for a party that condones and spreads the blatant lies of its presidential candidate. This week Mitch McConnell and other GOP leaders pressured the independent Congressional Research group to suppress a report showing that tax cuts for the wealthy do nothing to help the economy. I won't vote for anyone who has such a contempt for truth.

GOP leaders have gone out of their way to make voting more difficult this year. Voter ID laws, voter roll purging, laws restricting registration drives, reduced early voting in many states, and intimidation measures aimed at African-American and Latino voters are all forms of voter suppression. For the first time, the UN has sent monitors to the US to observe our elections. I'm not voting for the party that made all this happen.

Legislation in this country shouldn't be influenced by anyone but the voters. Many Democrats are in the pockets of lobbyists as much as Republicans, but the worst offenders right now--the Koch Brothers, Grover Norquist, the NRA, far-right religious fanatics, and Big Oil--are GOP cronies.

So that's the election in a nutshell for me. You're on your own.

Turn the Poor over to the Churches and Charities?

Line at a food bank

by Ruth A. Sheets

Back in the 1930’s during the Great Depression, my grandparents depended on several churches for their survival.  I say several because the amount any one church could give to a family was so small that my out-of-work grandfather could not feed his family on it.

With the advent of the food stamps and general welfare programs of the Federal and State Governments, poor people no longer had to go from church to church to seek help through their hard times.  They did not always have to beg at the church door.  They no longer had to sit through worship services that did not necessarily meet their needs in order to receive the pittance churches could afford to hand out.  Some of the stigma was removed from being poor.

Unfortunately, the removal of the stigma rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.  Being poor should be at least a little humiliating so people won’t want to remain in that condition.  The “haves” liked being able to reach down and give a little in order to receive the gratitude of the have-nots. 

It doesn’t matter that in order to receive welfare of any kind, individuals must be nearly in abject poverty.  Married couples have a hard time getting such help because it is assumed that if a man is in the household, he is working and earning enough to support his family or he’s a moocher. 

Many Republicans and Libertarians have chosen ending or severely (even more severely) limiting welfare and food stamps as one of their causes, saying that our nation can’t afford it anymore.  This is at a time when large companies are making record profits but bearly hiring.  This is at a time when many, if not most of the jobs companies are creating are mimimum wage jobs, which as anyone who has ever earned minimum wage knows, is not enough to live on.

I recently heard a report on NPR which included an interview with a truck driver for a food bank.  He told the interviewer and all of America that he thinks helping the poor is the job of the churches and charities and not the Government. 

I know that food banks, thrift stores, and other charitable organizations do a great good in our society.  They can sometimes take the edge off the pain of poverty.  What they cannot do is offer dignity to those who need their services.  They cannot provide a shared experience of conducting one’s life as one chooses:  going to the supermarket, buying new clothing for the kids, using things that are not other people’s discards.  They cannot provide these services on the scale needed in America at this time.

It is ironic that the folks who have the most, resent the commonwealth for trying to level the field for those who have not been as lucky.  I wonder how many of the lucky do their best to avoid paying taxes, but also give as little as they can to the charities that serve the poorest among us.  If they do give anything, it has to make a big splash in the media, “wonderful me giving to those less fortunate than I.”   

It is fascinating that those who earn the least pay the largest percentage of their income for charities, but it is the wealthiest who are celebrated for their largess.

Even if there are a few moochers  around, I’d rather take the chance to provide my fellow citizens with welfare, if needed, and food stamps, if needed, than know they have to go from church to charity to receive enough to survive, as my mother’s family did 75 years ago.